


Honeyed

by halotolerant



Category: Colditz (1972)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Bathtubs, Fluff, M/M, Prisoner of War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:58:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pat and Dick, tenderness, bathing and trying to say the things they're not very good at.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honeyed

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a vague post-1945 space when Pat and Dick have recently reunited, fits with my other Pat/Dick fic in one timeline. Strongly derived from and influenced by my Colditz dicussions with kindkit, who has written some stunning fic in this 'verse.

Steam rises off the water, thickening and warming the air, spreading the rich, honeyed scent of the salts Dick has strewn from a cut glass jar. 

And Dick is just standing there, by the gleaming copper-lined bath, casually naked as a statue, smiling.

Pat has always envied him that, the ease with which he can be so bare and vulnerable – oh he’s beautiful, and that helps, must do, but it’s clear that Dick simply doesn’t see nakedness as something worth blushing over. 

Pat spent his childhood shrouded head to foot, had his hands smacked as a child when he’d tried to take his coat off in the stifling heat of an Indian Mission church, wasn’t allowed to bathe in the river at the same time as his sister, went to the kind of school that tied boys’ hands to the bed-frames. 

But he’s here now, all the same, having shed - with an acute consciousness of his own awkwardness - his shirt and trousers and socks and vest and... there are so many more clothes than one remembers, and it takes so long and the stupidity of shoelaces must end many a marriage before they begin.

All long, smooth limbs, Dick ambles over to him, rests a hand on the back of his neck to draw him closer, kisses him, deep and tender, and starts walking backwards, drawing Pat towards the bath.

\- - -

It had been cold in Colditz even when it wasn’t – the height of summer would still find the castle chill and damp and dank, the water running barely beyond tepid, the stone soaking out what little warmth a brisk run could earn you. 

It had been dirty, even directly after one’s best efforts with sticky, sandy soap and what could be coaxed from the taps. Clothes, towels, bedding – nothing washed above once a fortnight, and coming back smelly and sticky still, and quickly suffused with sweat and stains and the squashed remains of the various infesting insects. 

It had been dangerous too, always. Privacy could be found, with a will, but there was no certainty in it, no moment one could not afford to be alert, nothing they could be sure of, even each other. 

To cocoon – in clothes, in silence, in secrets, in whispers – was entirely possible, only practical, and perhaps a relief. 

\- - -

Restraint is a quality in which they both excel. In many ways, it is the quality which first brought them together, the meeting of minds, of those keeping their heads when all about were losing theirs (and blaming it on Pat).

But this is not the moment for it. Shouldn’t be, if Pat can only manage to make himself...

“Relax,” Dick tells him. He has guided Pat into the bath, where Pat now sits bolt upright, tense despite the way the heat is melting him, shivering for all the warmth with the stroke of Dick’s hand upon the nape of his neck. Dick is kneeling at his side, on the floor. 

They had sex, before this, on the hotel bed, and it was everything wonderful, but it did not feel naked as this feels naked; Pat waiting, Dick washing him, Dick’s own belly still marked, marked by Pat, by both of them together – Dick could wipe that away easily, but he does not. 

Pat is warm, and Pat is becoming aroused again, but there is more reason to why he is blushing.

“Let me,” says Dick, suddenly, and the edge of frustration, of pure need in his voice makes Pat blink up at him, confused. 

“Please,” says Dick again, holding Pat’s gaze, scared eyes but determined, the bravest man Pat knows. “Relax. Let me.”

In bed, Dick can beg, can ask, but Pat would never deny him, and he thinks Dick must know that.

Now, though, Dick’s face is hungry, and he looks at Pat as though the restraint that he is shedding now is not about clothes and touching at all. As though this is something he too finds difficult, but that above all else he wants. 

Pat kisses him, sudden, before he can be afraid to, reaches over the bath rim, puts his hand in Dick’s hair, holds him close, and Dick makes a sound like sometimes he will, near the edge, losing for one instant his honey-smoothness and spiking, urgent, rough. 

Vulnerability can be a choice. And the choice can be a declaration. 

Pat sinks back, leaning against the edge, and closes his eyes, and allows it, all of it, the gentle brush of the flannel and the scrutiny of Dick’s gaze, alike applied to his sad old aching body, and does not flinch and does not resist, and in time it is almost too pleasant to stand. 

He opens his eyes. Dick is still kneeling beside him, looking down, dark-eyed, lip bruised with chewing, body pink and gold, member hard, and all for Pat. 

“Anything, you can have anything,” Pat hears himself say, answering an old question, or maybe a new one. 

Dick half drags him from the bath, then, and Pat is still damp as they find the bed, and each other. 

 

 


End file.
